Thursday 8 October 2015

Breatfeeding Dress DIY

Hello everyone! 

I’m here! I’ve made it back to the blog! Spud has fallen asleep on the sofa, and did not wake up when I moved away from her! It’s a miracle of epic proportions.

Life is very different here, I seem to be feeding almost constantly, did anyone else realise babies feed basically constantly?! I tend to do this lying down, I think I mentioned on instagram recently, this is mostly as I am lazy but also because it seems that Spud feeds better that way. Plus there is always the chance I can creep away from her if she's nodded off and quickly fill the dishwasher, start tea or put a wash on. These are my main life goals at the moment and I’m pretty happy with that. Mr T gave me some time to myself for the first time on Saturday and it was pretty brilliant, I made my adapted Coco pattern in 2 ½ hours! I surprised even myself.

I have decided to start something called #speedysew. This is my programme of sanity building whereby I'll work on my sewing in five minute dashes. This will necessarily mean leaving things out on the sides, but if I get five minutes in which to do anything, sew a single seam, or cut out one pattern piece I will still keep moving forward with my sewing, and watching my fabric pile whilst feeding won’t be quite so painful.

Today I'm going to show you my solution to the breastfeeding issue... how do I get at my boobs? I'm still figuring this out, it's difficult to find things that cover skin but give access to your boob. But when I went to Mamas and Papas to get a car seat for Spud, I found a super amazing black and white dress which had overlapping layers, and a top that folds down over it. Difficult to explain but take my word for it, it's the best. Inspired by this, I've made the following dress!


I decided to take some jersey tops that I no longer wear, and create some dresses with boob access. This is the first of this batch, the hem fabric is a piece that I bought in Abakhan when I used to work there, that's quite a while to stash some fabric! I never knew what to do with it, but having plain black fabric and piecing this together into a border print has made a beautiful fabric in itself. 

In order to do this yourself, I have taken some step by step photos for you. I (again) used the Washi pattern to identify the length of the top half. Apologies that the black doesn't really show up the cut lines that well.


This is the length that I cut it to, it should fall just under your chest.


Trying on the top, I pinned where the cuts will have to go, so that they fall right over your nipple


I then cut these as in the photo below, and then overlapped the two cut layers.


Stitch with a zig zag stitch two inches up from the bottom, and two inchess of the overlap from the top. 



I hope that makes some sense, here is a flash of bra to give you a better idea. Don't say I never treat ya.


I flipping love this dress, it's so comfortable and I feel really glam in it! I'm not having any excuses to be so glam at the mo... plus I look kind of tired in these photos... and my hair is all sorts of mess. 

But I kind of like that. I look how I feel, a bit tired, and not caring about my hair. I have other things going on! I want to be honest in this blog, I don't want people to think I'm breezing through this motherhood thing. I'm having a good time, but it's a tiring watching four hundred episodes of Stargate with a baby attached to you kind of good time.


In that vein, it has taken me three goes at writing this blog post, but I've done it! Niiiiiice. No promises about when I'll be back, but I hope it's soon.



















Monday 5 October 2015

Start Something Good this Wednesday

Hey everyone! Bit of a break there, but I'm sure you can understand why ha ha. I'm not gonna go into detail about life right now but it's all going well. I managed to get a bit of free time on Sunday, Free time! Woop! and took pictures of some things I've made Yay! So I'm gonna do a catch up pretty soon. 

But today I want to talk about something that I have been lucky enough to be asked to help with. M&S are launching a #startsomethinggood event in Manchester! The large store on Market St will be host to a sewing workshop on 7th October, where you will make personalised care bags for the Macmillan Supportive and Palliative Care Team in Manchester.  The bags will be used for patients undergoing Cancer treatment to carry sensitive medical equipment.

I will be there from 2pm on the day helping out with the stitching, and any embellishments you might want to make to your bag. This is such an important project, I hope you guys can make it along.

To come along you need to book your appointment at: Spark Something Good and select Making for Charity. And don’t worry, if you can only come in the morning, you will have the equally good opportunity to meet Paul, my super lovely fellow semi-finalist from the Bee. I’m sure he will be regaling all in attendance with his amazing makes, and he’s just started his own blog, so go take a look! Sew the Rainbow

  

LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...